


Seven Scenes

by jenna_thorn



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling, The Sandman
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-13
Updated: 2010-09-13
Packaged: 2017-10-11 19:03:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/115877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenna_thorn/pseuds/jenna_thorn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Endless</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seven Scenes

**1) Death:**

The flash of green blinded her and Lily panted, but her eyelids never fluttered. She couldn't hear Harry cry and she spun to his crib but a girl, short and dark haired, leaned over it, wiggling her fingers. Lily couldn't bring herself to touch her, but she turned with a friendly smile.

"I don't hurt," Lily said, then cringed at the inane comment. She reached toward the crib, but the dark eyed girl laid a cool dry hand on her wrist.

"We need to go," the stranger said and Lily stared.

"But, I just…my son, can't I…." Lily spread her hands wide, stuttering into a mute appeal.

"He's got his own life."

"And I'm dead."

"Yup, pretty much. Good cause and all that, if it helps." The dark spiral at her eye crinkled up when she smiled.

Lily returned the smile wryly. "Not as much as I would have thought, actually."

"How about this, then? There's an obnoxiously loud motorbike on the way."

Lily sighed, letting the breath out with only a small catch in her throat and said, "No. Yeah. Maybe."

The smaller woman held out one hand, palm upraised, curiously formal. Lily laid her hand in it, equally precise, but as they walked away they twined fingers, finally stepping away from Godric's Hollow like school girls on holiday, swinging clasped hands.

 **2) Desire:**

His heart pounded, blood roaring in his ears, but the mask hid the flush that spread across sallow cheeks and his eyes were as cold as the needle that drove ink like ice under his skin. His arm was cold, the breath that whispered the spell, half curse, half binding, over his wrist was cold, the eyes around him were cold. The only warmth came from the glowing tip of a cigarette held in hands too delicate to be masculine, too broad to be feminine. A scrape across skin as the snake's tongue was laid down to the very bone reminded him of where he was, of what he was doing, and his stomach churned. Droplets of blood welled, an echo of each black-green line and he sought distraction in the rhythm of the chant of the four people providing power for the ritual, in the outer circle of watchers, witnesses to this final step, his peers, masked from him for the final time. The anonymous face holding the cigarette smiled, a wry smirk, and he found himself doing the same. This was cause for celebration, all he desired, strength, acceptance, power over everyone who had scorned or slapped or spurned him. The faces of his past floated in the smoke from a single cigarette and he watched the final inking without flinching. Oh yes, this mark would be the key to everything he desired.

 **3) Delirium:**

Alone in a cell rich with the stench of stale water and staler fear a wild eyed woman plays solitaire with cards that exist only in her memory. Her imagination provides the suits; black spades lie on red diamonds, the red clubs on black swords.

The air shimmers but the woman doesn't look up to see her visitor. She knows that there is only one who should be there, only one who can choose to save her, only one who loves her and this girl with her blue and green eyes isn't him.

The girl kneels over the cards, makes them real with her touch and her hair writhes into snakes, into falling leaves, into a russet fall of feathers and Bellatrix, who has no more doubted her sanity than her Master's adoration, says simply, "Hello Cousin."

"Are we cousins? Good, I like family." Delirium blinks up at her. "Well, mostly."

"We may be cousins, Nymphadora, but I would never consider us family. Or particularly liked," she adds as an afterthought. She rolls a cracked fingernail across a diamond and it dissolves into blood, then gathers itself into an uncut ruby, grey edged.

"Oh," the girl says, subdued. "I was looking for my sister, but I don't think she's here. Well, I mean she's here, but not here-here."

"My sister isn't here." For a moment, her dark eyes glitter but Bellatrix sneers the surge of emotion away. She traces the edge of a spade and it crawls away as a cockroach toward boots tied with broken laces. The cockroach shimmers and becomes a caterpillar at the edge, humping upward to the edge. It reaches the edge of the boot, climbs onto her calf, entangles its feet and crouches, curling in on itself, before splitting open up the back and unfurling orange and green wings. The butterfly launches itself to the freedom of the cell bars, but Bellatrix glances up and it grays into a moth, then falls to the floor, a trickle and smear of ash.

The girl is gone. Bellatrix takes up the cards, a deck of 50, and deals out another game.

 **4) Destiny:**

In a maze of a garden bordered by mist, a lank figure in a brown robe walks. He carries a book, open, before him.

The pages slide over one another. Images repeat at intervals, random and sporadic. He knows that others, humans, mages, lunatics, would create meaning in the patterns of recurrent images. A boy round-cheeked and thick fingered opens a package at breakfast, a shining glass ball filled always with smoke. The unseeing iris of a lifeless eye stares upward at a glowing skull impaled by a snake. A rain soaked child with tousled hair pulls a golden ball from sheeting rain; the fragile-seeming wings flutter in his hasty grab. A boy argues with a white haired man while behind him four children tear down shelves of golden glass orbs, letting them shatter into dust underfoot. An annulet becomes a snake, devouring its own tail.

There is no pattern in the circle; the pattern rings the world.

He turns the page and leaves no fingerprints behind.

 **5) Dream:**

The gate of ivory spewed forth an army of corseted maidens, ranks of shimmering jewels, feasts, feathered showgirls, and riches beyond counting. The shimmering dreams tumbled over one another, on their way to sleepers across the world, escorted by an army of kilted mice, bagpipes skirling as they march into the mist.

But Morpheus, on his way elsewhere as always, leaned for a moment on the gate of horn, watching Nagini slither toward Scotland on her way to a bed hung with red and gold.

 **6) Destruction:**

A bear of a man with a dog at his side paused a street away from a smoking crater, listening the echoes of mad laughter.

"Told ya they didn't need me," he said, shrugging his pack higher.

"Hey, you didn't tell me, boss. I know better than to argue with you."

"You make a point of arguing with me at all times."

"If you insist," the dog agreed.

The man feigned a kick at his companion, who let his tongue loll out in a doggy smile. They watched the dust settle for a moment listening to the sirens near and the dog jumped out, coming back with a rat wiggling in its jaw. "Tathes fuddy."

"I should say so, that's a man."

The dog spat the rat out with such force that it bounced twice against the pavement then curled up around a mangled paw, whimpering.

"You'd think it would run," the dog growled.

"He's gonna have to learn to, if he's going to keep that shape," the man replied. "Not much room in this world for rats who want to sleep on pillows and get carried about, now is there?"

"If you are referring," the dog replied as haughtily as he could with rat blood smeared across his teeth, "to certain bed linens that happened to be laying where I wanted to sleep…" The man laughed as they moved into dust and smoke.

Brick dust settled, grey-red, settled with a quietness that was eerie in juxtaposition with the frantic activity a block away. The rat watched, licking its paw in a futile attempt at comfort.

 

 **7) Despair:**

 _Each of St. Mungo's wards has a mirror. It's supposed to encourage the patients, to remind them of who they are._

Alice smoothes the edges of the gum wrapper to make it smooth, to make it shiny, to make it a mirror.

 _The mirror in the closed ward is oval in a gilded wooden frame, a Muggle antique and therefore silent. The magical mirror it replaced had requested the transfer._

Alice tears the edges of the smoothed wrapper into mirror, the rectangle into oval. She's learned so many things: how a tendon feels when it is pulled free, what a punctured lung sounds like to the breather, that the woman with the rat on her shoulder can't see you if you look directly at her. She has forgotten so many things: the feel of a cat, the touch of sunshine, her husband's name, her child's, her own.

 _The human body cannot voluntarily suffocate. Upon loss of consciousness, reflexive actions like peristalsis and breathing re-start automatically. Self-asphyxiation as a suicide method requires tools._

Alice folds the mirror with the precision reserved for madmen, children, and engineers. This mirror will protect him from despair. He has only to see it for what it is.


End file.
